Fentanyl-Laced Cocaine Continues Deadly Spread Across The US

Authorities in Vermont are warning the public about the rapidly increasing threat from cocaine mixed with the deadly opioid fentanyl, which is killing unsuspecting users across the state.

Officials with the Barre Police Department issued a public alert due to a rash of overdoses in the last week, one of which proved fatal. Police say they increasingly do not know what to tell the public to specifically look out for due to the prevalence of fentanyl, which is making all drug batches deadlier, reports WCAX.

The warning is intended for anyone in the area consuming drugs, not just opioid users. Officials say people using cocaine are at particular risk of being exposed to a fatal dose of fentanyl.

“The change recently has been that fentanyl is showing up more often in cocaine,” said Deborah Hopkins, the operations director for Vermont Substance Abuse Services, according to WCAX.

Health officials in Vermont are only the latest to sound the alarm on the threat posed by the infiltration of fentanyl across drug supplies. The Ohio Department of Health recently asked medical professionals and first responders to start using the opioid overdose reversal drug Narcan for any situation where a person has overdosed on drugs in case fentanyl is involved.

Fentanyl, a synthetic painkiller roughly 50 to 100 times more powerful than morphine, is blamed as the primary driver of the addiction crisis and rising overdose deaths. Deaths related to cocaine and fentanyl in Ohio recently jumped by 37 percent, claiming 850 lives in 2017, while deaths related to mixtures of fentanyl and methamphetamine increased by 142 percent.

Authorities fear that because cocaine is more widely used as a social drug than a substance like heroin, many users are unaware of the fatal risks even a small amount of the drug now carries.

“As we see this expansion of fentanyl and fentanyl analogs into the drug supply, the universe of people who might be at risk is much broader,” Christopher Jones, director of the National Mental Health and Substance Abuse Police Laboratory at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, recently told Philly.com. “That’s why you see the really significant spikes in overdose deaths since 2015.”

Fentanyl overtook heroin as the U.S.’s deadliest substance in 2016, claiming 19,413 lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC estimates cocaine-overdose deaths increased from roughly 4,000 in 2009 to more than 6,700 in 2015. Officials predict cocaine-overdose deaths are about to explode in 2017 to nearly 11,000.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein previously warned it takes only 2 milligrams of fentanyl, “the equivalent of a few grains of table salt,” to cause a fatal overdose.

In the midst of this epidemic US hospital have a desperate shortage of all IV opiates, Fentanyl, Dilaudid, Morphine! They blame it on the Hurricane in Puerto Rico but doesn’t seem to be a problem on the street.